FRANKFORT, Ky. - Keeping kids out of the court system altogether is at the heart of broad recommendations coming Thursday from Kentucky's Juvenile Code Task Force. The effort to reform the state's juvenile justice system is honing in on improving early intervention.

Front-end services are "essential to everything," said Lisa Jones, chief district judge in Daviess County. Not only would that reduce the number of juveniles being incarcerated or committed to the state, she said, but it's also good for the youth.

"That's often times what the family is wanting when they reach out for help to the courts or to the schools or to law enforcement," she said. "They're wanting services, they're wanting something to make it better."

Jones said "a good assessment" is most crucial.

Rep. John Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, a former prosecutor, agreed, adding that Kentucky is detaining "far too many low-level juvenile offenders" which is often "the worst possible outcome" for both the child and the taxpayers.

"Without proper identification of the problem, we continue to herd certain juveniles into certain categories and they end up in juvenile prison," he said. "That costs taxpayers between $87,000 and $91,000 per year."

That's the cost of locking up one child for a year.

Tilley, who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, said the task force recommendations will be used to create some "specific" efforts at reform during the upcoming legislative session.

Among the ideas the Juvenile Code Task Force has considered are standardizing protocols with schools before seeking court involvement, clarifying the role of school resource officers, and enhancing diversion options. For instance, Jones said that Owensboro uses two emergency shelters.

"When you get that midnight phone call about a juvenile who's done something, you can look at placing them in an emergency shelter instead of incarcerating them," she said.

During their two years of work, task force members heard mounds of research which show that court intervention, secure detention and out-of-home placement can all do more damage than good when trying to get a youth back on track.

In Kentucky, Tilley said, studies show that probation violators and misdemeanor offenders are locked up, on average, only a month less than youth who commit felonies.

"We're putting very low-level offenders in with the most dangerous juvenile offenders, " he said, "and that creates more dangerous juvenile offenders. That's a bad thing."

To make reform work, Jones said, it's essential to educate people so they realize that locking up kids is "harmful."


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Ten years ago today, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by Cleveland police while holding a toy gun, sparking national protests for police reform.

Today, a Detroit man who spent nine years wrongfully imprisoned has turned his own experience into a force for change.

Eric Anderson, wrongfully convicted of armed robbery in 2010 at age 20, was exonerated in 2019. He's now cofounder of the Organization of Exonerees, a nonprofit supporting those who are wrongfully convicted. Anderson said his own testimony helps train police officers.

"With the hope that them hearing our stories, they can approach their job cautiously," Anderson explained. "We also let them know, 'If y'all do nefarious things, it's going to come back and bite y'all.' Keep it clean across the board. Don't plant evidence, don't lie, don't try to take away stuff in order to get a conviction."

At the time of the crime he was accused of, evidence revealed Anderson was more than 10 miles away at a restaurant, where he'd been shot in the foot as a bystander to an altercation. Experts believe 1% to 3% of people in prison nationwide could be innocent, which may mean up to 1,000 people in Michigan are wrongfully incarcerated.

After a four-year effort, Anderson and other advocates for safer policing are making a final push in Michigan's lame-duck legislative session, for the Police Improvement and Community Relations Bill Package, which includes guidelines for police use of force, would boost transparency in investigations and improve training on de-escalation and bias.

Anderson loves the proposals, mainly for their focus on officer training and de-escalation.

"Being an officer of the law and a person that's here to serve and protect us, you're supposed to be fluent in the skills of de-escalation," Anderson contended. "Trying to calm somebody down so you can come to the conclusion about what's really going on and the next course of action."

As of 2023, Michigan's compensation fund has given more than $50 million to exonerees, although delays persist for some in getting support.

Cities and states are struggling with mounting homelessness, and West Virginia is no exception.

A recent report points to potential solutions and immediate actions local governments can take to reduce the number of people on the streets.

A different report, released this year by the state's Department of Human Services, found homelessness is up by 24% compared to 2021.

Providing jobs such as trash cleanup for homeless individuals, and managing public spaces, are effective - said Lisel Petis, senior fellow at the R Street Institute.

She said in several states local organizations are working with businesses to create safe designated places for people living in cars to go at night.

"One that I've spoken with where they have seen success in working with businesses and using parking lots and giving people some privacy," said Petis, "so that they can transition from their car back into houses."

According to the state report, nearly 60% of individuals experiencing homelessness were male, and nearly half were between the ages of 25 and 44.

Thirteen percent identified themselves as Black or African American.

Petis added that while encampment sweeps reduce the spread of disease and reduce pollution, they can also displace people without offering viable alternatives and destroy personal belongings and important documents - increasing barriers to long-term stability for unhoused people.

She said she believes the surge of anti-camping laws popping up across the nation is a knee-jerk reaction to a complex and long-simmering problem.

"Homelessness across the nation has been growing year over year since about 2016," said Petis, "so we know that just by kind of slapping a band aid on isn't going to stop this growing issue."

According to a 2019 report from the National Homelessness Law Center, 72% of the 187 cities surveyed had at least one law enforcing public camping bans, a 92% increase from 2006.




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New federal data show aggravated assaults are up in Kentucky by 7.2%, but other types of violent crime have gone down.

Overall, violent crime in Kentucky remains much lower compared to the nation as a whole, said Ashley Spalding, research director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

"When you compare 2023 to that 2021 peak for violent crime," she said, "we see it's come down significantly since then."

A 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found younger people and people with lower incomes are far more likely to report being the victim of a violent crime than are higher-income people.

Spalding said laws such as House Bill 5, which lawmakers passed earlier this year, will drive up the number of people in the state's prisons and jails without addressing the root cause of crime.

"High rates of incarceration in communities are associated with higher rates of overdose deaths," she said. "The more that states make harsher criminal penalties for opioids like fentanyl, can put communities more at risk."

She said the policies in the bill are expected to cost the state an estimated $1 billion over the next decade. That money, she contended, could go toward health care, shelters and other resources that help communities.

"It would be the wrong direction for Kentucky to pass more harmful, harsh, regressive criminal legal system policies in 2025," she said.

According to the Pew Research Center, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said they believe there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite an ongoing downward trend in crime rates.